Tag: Modern Buildings

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) was born in what is now the Czech Republic, but much of his influence was felt in Vienna, Austria. He scandalized the city in 1909 by situating the bare-bones Goldman and Salatsch Building (Looshaus) across the plaza from the ornate Imperial Palace.

Loos justified the style of simplicity and functionality in his famous 1908 essay Ornament & Crime. Through his writings and building designs, Loos introduced modernist ideas to Vienna and the world.

Architect Frank Gehry uses computers to help design and build his famous wavy, shiny, psycho-structures. The EMP in Seattle is a museum of rock-and-roll, but even if you don’t like rock music, you’ll want to see Gehry’s rebellious design for the building.

Architect Frank Gehry has been making waves for more than sixty years, and his concert hall in Los Angeles ranks as one of his most controversial—and most celebrated.

The stainless steel Walt Disney Concert Hall expanded the Los Angeles Music Center, adding a 2,265-seat main auditorium, a 266-seats theater, and two outdoor amphitheaters. Critics complained that the glittering facade posed a traffic hazard, so Gehry later tweaked the finish to tone down the metallic sparkle.

With a six-story spiraling ramp, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum is a hallmark example of hemicycle design. At the center, an open rotunda offers views of artwork on several levels. Wright, who was known for his self-assurance, said that his goal was to “make the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony such as never existed in the World of Art before.”

The circular building seems as revolutionary today as it did when the museum first opened on October 21, 1959.

Explore Wright’s New York Guggenheim Museum

Curving, organic shapes are the hallmark of Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. You may know him for grand, swooping structures like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, or the Dulles International Airport near Washington D.C.

However, Saarinen also designed on a smaller scale. He began his career designing furniture with Charles Eames. By the 1960s, Saarinen’s Tulip Chair became a classic interior design motif.